50/50 (2011) | Review by Mark Leidner

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a great actor because he can play both iconic heroes as well as idiosyncratic wierdos; this movie in any other actor’s hands would’ve probably blown ass.

Rogen’s schtick is getting more efficient. It’s like the Jabba the Hutt of cheap jokes started working out; now his puerile misogyny lands 8 out of 10 punches instead of 15 out of 45. If he’s going to make it into comedy heaven, Rogen needs to focus. In a few years he’ll be too bloated and hamster-faced for any audience to stand looking at, and will go the way of Jon Favreau.

Felt sorry for the bitchy hot chick, whoever she was; there was a creepily rapey scene where the bros destroy her painting by lighting it on fire and throwing axes at it while laughing. Fuck bitches! Men Rule! ‘S’cool cuz he got cancer.

( Has there ever been a Law & Order SVU episode where the perp is motivated by a terminal diagnosis to commit a series of heinous sex crimes, then gets arrested and tried but dies of cancer before the jury can render the verdict?)

50/50’s LOL-factor was one step above mediocre. Angelica Houston is a good-ass actress. She’s the mom. 50/50 made me want to not get cancer.

It made me happy that I could cry obscenely in such a medium-good movie. It’s been so long since I cried at all, and the last time I cried, it seemed like I would never stop, so it was kind of nice, knowing the tears were the inspired by temporary, external stimuli instead of something you perceive to be permanent and internal.

50/50 contains one of the best murderous screams of existential torture I have ever seen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a great actor).

Cancer is awful; let us all take a moment in this time of global economical and political turmoil to catch our breaths. Let us remember whatever our differences might be as humans–gender, race, class, language, age, nationality–that death is the common enemy. It is the naturalest and yet oddest paradox that we all degrade, decay, go limp, and plunge back into the nothingness from whence we were summoned, but achieve our highest fulfillment as men and women in the way we attend to others who are closer, or are slipping faster toward the grave than us. Let us not forget the words of me, later, when I say now that whatever is waiting on the other side, heaven can occur on Earth if we all pull together. That doesn’t mean grabbing candy out of our better-costumed neighbor’s bags. That means emptying our own bag on the ground in front of those with no costume at all, walking away into the shadows before they ask our name.